Verb Vixen

medusasstory:

It does help, to be a writer, to have the sort of crazed ego that doesn’t allow for failure. The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write. Because the rejection slips will arrive. And, if the books are published, then you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will be as well. And you’ll need to learn how to shrug and keep going. Or you stop, and get a real job.

literarymuse:

 

“You don’t know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you’re pretty sure that even if you finish it it won’t have been worth the time or energy and every time you stop long enough to compare it to the thing that you had in your head when you began—-a glittering, brilliant, wonderful novel, in which every word spits fire and burns, a book as good or better than the best book you ever read—-it falls so painfully short that you’re pretty sure that it would be a mercy simply to delete the whole thing.

Welcome to the club.

That’s how novels get written.

You write. That’s the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”

If you aren’t already reading thebloggess.com, you should be.  She’s brilliant and hysterical, consistently.  I’ve linked the post to when she met Neil Gaiman, which had me laughing so hard I was crying. Also follow her on twitter: @TheBloggess

For the record, I’ve met Neil Gaiman and not only is he clever and cool but he may have a bionic hand because no human could sign, personalize, and doodle cute pictures in the number of books that man can sign in an hour.  It’s terrifying and awe-inspiring.  Truly.